Holiday Gifts For the Theater Lover

FRANK RIZZOHartford Courant

What to give that theater lover for Christmas? Here are a few recommendations.

On my bedside table already is “Fosse” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $32), Sam Wasson’s well-researched and crafted biography of director-choreographer Bob Fosse. And what’s the must-have theater CD to have? I’d go with“Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,” the downtown musical based on a chapter of “War and Peace.” Yes, you read that right — and it’s the show with the highest hipster cachet in New York right now.

Finally, you can’t go wrong with theater tickets. I wish Connecticut theaters would get together to create a state-wide gift card that can be used at the theater-goers’ choice and market it with a grand camopaign that trumpets the excitem,ent of live theater. Oh well.

In the meantime, the shows I would recommend that promise to be very special are “These Paper Bullets,” with new songs written for this adaptation of “Much Ado About Nothing” by Green Day’sBillie Joe Armstrong.The show playsYale Repertory Theatre in New Haven March 14 to April 5. Or the national tour of “Once” that is making its Connecticut premiere at the Shubert Theater in New Haven Feb. 26 to March 2. The musical is haunting, the show is imaginatively staged and it’s romantic as hell. Finally, when I saw “War Horse” at Lincoln Center several years ago it became one of the most moving and exciting theatrical experiences I’ve ever had. The national tour comes to the Bushnell Center for the Arts in Hartford Jan. 28 to Feb. 3.